Laurie's Story: A Companion Novel to Little Women
by Shenzi
Summary: This is the story of Little Women, told from Laurie's point of view.


This is a brilliant story by three brilliant brilles. So, read it, yo.

Disclaimer: We don't own anything relating to the wonderful work of Little Women. Except a couple of copies of it.

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**Laurie's Story  
****A Companion Novel to Little Women**

The journey from Germany had been hard, but it was nothing compared to the arrival at a strange house, bearing nothing but the knowledge that his parents would not be waiting inside.

He raised a faltering hand to the door-knocker, so much more ornate than the one adorning Dear Frieda's home.

"Oh dear Frieda," he breathed, his outstretched hand retreating to her picture, safely stowed in his breast pocket, "how my life has changed."

He thought back to the features he'd memorised as a child--the tiny veins flowing like rivers over her snowy skin, her mountainous eyebrows sloping down her avalanche of a nose, the tiny pockmarks like so many skiers slaloming over her bony cheekbones, her delicate chin, bejeweled by a wart and the occasional raven hair that she forgot to trim or tweeze, her flat lips opened into the canyon of her mouth, amassing crooks and crevices as far as the eyes could see, her watery eyes accentuated her high brow, sporting a good amount of blue-grey hair that Laurie often suspected to be a wig, especially when it was o backwards.

Laurie pushed back his hair, as dark as a black sunset, from his eyes, grayer than the sky, before a rainfall which could not withhold the single tear that crawled down his aqualine nose like a spelunker exploring the crevasses of his youthful face (the colour of a sickly apricot) in memory of such a beloved housekeeper.

He began to think back to her shrill cackle, slight limp, and chain-smoking habits, but it hurt too much; the wound was still too raw to think back--to remember was a pain unbearable.

Finally, night fell, so he opened the door and stumbled into the house, barely acknowledging his uncle's querying face, as he somehow made his way up the stairs.

"WHERE do YOU think you are going, young man?" abruptly issued from the stern mouth beneath the eyebrows overshadowing the top half of his face.

Laurie didn't care; "I'm going to have a good cry about my parents being dead," Laurie rejoinded snarkily.

"Your parents would be ashamed to see their son turning into such a pansy," Belted uncle Lawrence, "Not that anyone would be surprised considering what your parents were...PANSIES!"

Laurie was so affronted as his face heated up like an iron, which would have evaporated the tears about to fall down his face, had he not at that moment fallen into a faint that no smelling salts could revive.

"Laurie! What in God's name is that boy doing?" was the last remark to which Laurie was privy before he descended onto the mahogany floor like an overstuffed sack of barley.

When he awoke, Laurie found that he was still on the floor with 2 months of dust accumulated on his noble ivory brow (this is a fine example of his uncle's idea of "bringing up children by hand")

He utilized his aching muscles to raise himself up like a seal, from which position he spotted a not (one of many) nailed to the stairs reading "OUR NEW BOOKS and CLOTHES ARE in the FIRST ROOM UPSTAIRS moron".

Laurie's ebony locks flopped in submission, though whether this was due to the still stinging loss of Dear Frieda, the ill spirited monikers his uncle had applied to him, or his 2 month long slumber or the hall floor, he knew not.

His long hair (due to its 2 month incubation period), which would never be sheared again, as he vowed then and there on the hall floor, flowed behind him as he stalked over to the piano to pour out his soul in melancholy song.

As the music cascaded from his heart translated perfectly into piano music (thank you, Frieda, for the lessons) he swung his tressed head toward the window, espying through the window of the neighboring house a woman's hair ribbon. The whimsical whipping of the tress restraint filled his heart with something quite like hope.

That something was dashed immediately upon the rocks of life by the sudden, blythe appearance of his uncle with a handsome, sandy-haired, goatee'd, shabby, capricious man in tow.

"Lawrence, this is your tutor, Mr. Brown--obey his orders, including abstinence from that blasted piano until you read the first book of the Iliad--there IS a war on after all" barked his uncle.

Laurie narrowed his eyes at his unsightly uncle's proclamation.

The tutor scowled at him until his hideous uncle left the room and then snapped, "right, let's go out on the town." and this was the beginning of the most unmemorable night in young Laurie's life.

The next morning, as Laurie woke up in a bed which he didn't recognize in a moment of panic until he realized that it was his own (that he had never before entered), he discovered that he was now a master of ancient Greek and had a bonnet and a raspberry-coloured cricket outfit in his suitcase.

"To sleep, perchance to dream," he murmured to himself before tumbling into the comfort of his remembrance of Dear Frieda's loving embrace.

He'd always loved the pedophiliac old nut, he reflected as he swept his sheaf of charcoal plaits from his face, he gazed at his curiously PEI mud stained sheets and started as his baseball bat-wielding uncle came storming into his room shouting, "WHERE THE HECK WERE YOU--WHAT HAPENED--WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR SHEETS--AND WHY ARE YOU DRESSED AS A WOMAN, YA PANSY?!"

After this rather embarrassing episode, Laurie was confined to all the windowless rooms for a week whilst writing essays about Chaucer and dreaming of the day he would meet a female his very own age and size and preferably hair colour.

Gone was his grief concerning dear Frieda--he cared only of the prospect of a kindred spirit of the feminine sort, someone to tame his nightingale locks and brush the drizzling some tears from his downy cheeks.

Mustering up the courage to speak to his uncle, Laurie stormed foggily into the study with his shaggy mane bustling after his glistening head and began to argue the fact that he had, in fact, memorised the first half of he Iliad by squealing: "TWO HOUSES, BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY..."

"Wow!" said his austere quunculer figure" since Mr. Brown has given such glowing reviews of your schoolwork, what with this display, I feel it is permitted for you to learn EVERYTHING by Mozart--have at it" to his glowing nephew.

And having at it was precisely the action which Laurie did indeed perform, clanging the ivory rectangular prisms until the sanguine tempest in his heart was quieted.

Engulfed by the music, Laurie glanced carelessly out the window and chanced to see a pale face transfixedly staring down at his face which was pale enough to be a slightly sultrier and more tear stained reflection of the female one that was gazing longingly at... well, actually, at his piano.

He tuned on the sultry stare, tossed his tresses, and cooked his left eyebrow hopefully, but the face was pulled from the window by a feminine hand "Never mind her now," Laurie assured himself confidently, there will be time enough for her later -- at the moment he wanted nothing but to play on and play on the piano man did.

On the off chance of meeting the six bee-yu-tee-ful ladies next door, Laurie immediately began work on a peace-gift for the females of the across the yard region, who were presently playing with kittens (he knew because of the killing telescope that his father had given him before he died).

After he recovered from the blood loss induced by the making of the gift, he slouched off to the "March House" (as he liked to think of it in his dreams) chaperoned by Mr. Brown, then realised it might have been more conciliatory to march.

"Mr. Brown," Laurie plied wonderingly to his pedagogal escort, "were you an unaged maiden, would you like this humble gift?"

"What the heck is that?!" the indisguishably older man rescinded vehemently, "Good god, man! Are you trying to lose me any chance of gaining their affections?!"

"What-- Oh, hello, do I know you?" breathed the mannish girl who opened the door to Laurie, who thought she was flamin' HAWT.

Laurie gaped, awestruck, at the mannish yet female doorkeeper and managed to choke out a hesitant and clumsy, "I don't think so."

Truth be told, he probably had, since mannish Jo never forgot a face, certainly not one as architecturally sound and flamin hott as Laurie's (his companion's face was tolerable as well)

Anyways, he met also some boring chick and another boring younger girl and a mother and some insane little girl, but none of them were worth comparing to Jo, who rose so steadily in his affections that he felt a need to discuss the meaning of love with Robert Burns.

He was fully prepared to do so and amorous words were readying for the leap from his studly lips when Jo broke him from his mental discussion by grasping his willowy arm with her mannish paw.

"I've had the most ingenious notion! You must be my bosom friend! We can share all our deepest secrets and scheme wonderful wicked things!" and with that, she bent to whisper eagerly into his raptly focused ear.

Laurie's heart seemed to fly on wings of glimmering bronze throughout the next month, his hand raced across the page drawing pictures of her right earlobe, as is mind toiled to find a way he could get Jo to that dance her family puritanically opposed (he believed).

The squeaky, ivory hinges squealed in ill-concealed discomfort as his mature uncle burst in the room, swigging an crystalline stein of tangy lager which bled droplets of ale on the neglected oaken flooring, while he yelled, "What are you still doing in bed, you pansy? It's 2 in the afternoon!"

In response, Laurie burst into piteous tears, feeling anguish pulse through his belly, as his throbbingly bitter tongue sought to cast off the adolescent angst that was oozing from his every pore toward his sole confidante-- his uncle.

Those same angst-ridden pores were abruptly clogged as a slouching manservant with a right knee as creaky and wet as the tears of Laurie's soul, doused him with a lilac perfume (for Laurie had not bathed; he was so focused on his budding relationship with Jo), enfolded him in a clean shirt, white as the pupils of dear Frieda's eyes, and straightened his midnight swan down-tresses in preparation for the ball, as his uncle crushed his dreams with malicious words.

"Smuggins, you moron! You made my nephew into more of a pansy than he usually is!" was the caregivers irate reply to the elderly servant's olfactory doings.

He then whipped out a very used cricket bat and proceeded to bludgeon the old man into a mass gorier than the heart that had been ripped from Laurie's chest as soon as particles of the perfume had ventured near his finely sculpted nostrils-- it was the same scent that lingered, like an aura, about Jo's mannish yet-living cadaver.

"Oh! Cadavers like my dear dear dear dead parents" he thought, tears brightening the the crystal edifice of his eyes, dripping down through his dark lashes which should have elicited swooning in half of the population of the town, but due to his perverse fate attracted even more cries of "Pansy" and a crushing blow to his elbow.

As Smuggins slogged away through his own crimson entrails, Laurie felt chartreuse bile bubble up his swanlike throat at the thought of querying his uncle about his embryonic romance with the mannish yet beguiling Jo and, choking down the acidic liquid, forced himself to speak.

"er... um... Uncle Lawrence..." Laurie began, his black hole pupils dilating in utter fear of the vicious and vivacious old coot, "I need your... advice... about... this girl-" "SO THE BOY ISN'T A PANSY," his uncle bellowed drunkenly in response, "HE'S A MANLY MAN WITH LOTS OF TESTOSTERONE," (Laurie was sure the neighbors could hear every word), "Well, go ask the chica out, manly man!"

Laurie dared to lift his head up, tresses sashaying, to meet the bloodied eyes of Smuggins, which he imagined to be Jo's eyes(which wasn't so hard because they were so mannish), darkly inspiring him to throw all his chips on the table and head out to the dance, no matter the absence of Frieda to kiss his tears away.

His heart pitter-pounding, he boldly rose from his bed and began to do precisely the action which he had not done for the two weeks during which he had been doing nothing but mooning over the mannish yet ensnaring Jo, the action being clothing himself in proper attire, before turning to Smuggins, who was steadily making his way to the door, now nearly half way to his destination, and shook his digits with his delicate hand, declaring, "My dearest thanks, my good man, for thou has given hope unto this poor servant of the mannish yet ensnaring Jo."

And with that, he jaunted foxily from the room, leaping and bounding in the direction of the Marche Chateau and mentally preparing himself for the ever-so deep and soul rending proposal that he was about to bestow with beau-esque snozzitude upon his dearest and most mannish Jo (he could already picture the dismantled look of ecstasy upon her elegant, pale, mannish, pockmarked, tear-stained (his tears, of course) face).

Luckily for Laurie, his uncle, knowing a leetle bit about relationships (being such a swinging batchla), had the foresight to warn the footmen of the carriage, who were able to steer Laurie there (and eventually to the ball all the March girls were at anyhow) all whist calming him with sweet nothings and not bending the ebony creases of the pant legs concealing his elegant dance-worthy knees.

As Laurie's little grey cells fashioned a lovely dream world in which he waltzed, line-danced, and cha-cha'd with the sparkling yet mannish Jo, his jet-nightingale tresses gavotted about his noble brow, anticipating the diversions of the evening, until he, so fatigued by the exertions of his pilose coiffure, swooned onto the floor of the carriage.

When Laurie wakened, he found himself in different clothes (before they were proper black, now he was adorned in a fruity lavender) and slumped linguistically over a desk and chair set like so much pasta -- indeed, there was a bowl of pasta and a Faberge egg beside him -- in a room that was lavish beyond even the dreams of his lavish locks; a room in deep, rich tones like a flat and b minor, with a curtained doorway and golden tapestries hanging from the walls, which slanted in slightly.

Laurie found something scratching his chest, and dipping his porcelain doll-like hand into his breast pocket hidden by the flounces of his cravat, he found a note of vile magenta : "Just to make sure you don't PANSY out on me, I've booby trapped this room so that you can't leave unless accompanied by the babe of yours. I'll be sending her your way. Che-Che-che. If you shame the Lawrence name by not making some serious inroads, remember, I've got an new cricket bat.- YOUR UNCLE (and don't your forget it)"

Laurie stifled the sobs that erupted from his rosy lips at the suddenness of this development with his dainty hands and proceeded to release his lugubrious melancholy in a long, low groan--Dear Frieda would never have allowed his grating paternal figure to roll the dice with her little Laurie's fate thus, of this Laurie was sure and a single crystalline dew drop was shed from the effervescent pool that was his eyes--oh Dear Frieda, how much her absence still ached the cockles of his heart.

He tried to rise from the floor and found himself weighed down by what was currently the heaviest and most gaseous thing on the earth, his heart, which was pumping scarlet blood through his slightly clogged arties at the most vague mention of his heart song, his one true companion in the whirling circus of his life, his other half, his last unicorn, his sole photocopy, his ambient, androgynous ardor, his beautiful belle, his cadaverous canine, his delicious delegate, his earnest ear, his fanciful filly, his grosse giantess, his heavenly heart, his ingenious inclusion, his jiggly Jo, his kangaroo-liking kraken, his limestone lover, his mannish matriarch, his nuptial narwhal, his oregano oscillation, his perfect pet, his quivering quip, his raunchy rebel, his swashbuckling soul-mate, his titillating top-girl, his undulating uno, his Vatican velour, his wonderful woman, his xylophonic Xanadu, his yearning yuppie, his zippy zenith -- oh, how he loved her in all the letters of the alphabet.

If there were a friend there to observe this perfect picture of agony (oh! alas he had none, just the hope of one contained in his ideal of the tantalizing yet masculine Jo), he might see mannish ankle reflected in the pathetic glistening of Laurie's blue ganges of a right eye, galvanizing him just like that frog such that his legs jumped his body up despite the angst laying upon his soul like a city bus upon two day old road kill, as he kept his crimson upper lip stiff and unflaired his nostrils.

Laurie's scarlet lower lip, however, wobbled like a newly purchased Weeble as an ominous, foreboding, and portentious "knock-knock-knock" sounded from the stately mahogony door...

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Well, if you want to find out what happens, you'll have to read CHAPTER TWO!! Or, you could just go watch the movie. Because this is, ultimately, based on the movie—NOT the book.

I'd also like to apologise in advance for spelling/grammar issues or inconsistencies with the plot or book or movie or whatever. Because, they're there. I know it.

Aand... we probably won't have another chapter up for... a long time. So go read a book. I recommend some Jane Austin, she's pretty rockin'

And, of course, R&R.


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